Seated in the warm dining room, the fading light filtering through the windows and illuminating the ivy covered walls of the old house, you take a seat at the table. A plate, piled high with roasted ham glazed with honey—personally preferred over the dryer turkey—and a hearty amount of mashed potatoes. A glass filled with sparkling grape juice—alcohol is and has always been a rare sight at parties like these, with even the adults abstaining from alcoholic beverages.

As you all start to eat, light discussions begin. Much of it, your typical small talk. ‘How’s college?’ ‘Good, classes are going well, yes it’s enjoyable. The food’s alright, certainly not as good as this though.’ Typical things. Then of course the question always comes.

‘Speaking of college, you’re about to graduate soon, right? What do you plan on doing with your degree? Why, History and English are very useful degrees, so I’m sure you could find some rewarding job to put them to use.’

And when you answer ‘I’d like to work in the video game industry,’ the inevitable blank stares. Well, of course what they’ll say is ‘Oh, that sounds interesting,’ or ‘I’ve heard video games are popular these days.’ Empty words.

The cousin who Majored in Poli sci works in Washington, the other who Majored in Art partakes in countless activist protests for sweeping political change. Your grandfather who didn’t have the time for college but nonetheless spent countless hours pouring over the Greek Classics. To your family, liberal arts is one of the most valuable things that can be contributed. That can help push society forwards, to better and brighter places. To them, getting a degree in liberal arts just to go into entertainment feels a bit hollow. So of course they suggest that you become a teacher instead. ‘Sure, the pay isn’t great, but it’s a rewarding job! Educating the youth, what could be more important than that?’

What do you say to that then? In the end, you talk about how ‘Video games and multimedia techniques are the future of educating the youth. By using technology and more entertaining methods, we can give children more engaging, hands-on experiences. For instance, a historical video game that allows students to walk through Victorian England.’

And everyone’s eyes light up with understanding, and they applaud your foresight and drive to help improve society. And then the conversation moves on.

Well, what you said wasn’t a lie—it’s something you believe, after all. But that’s not the kind of video game you want to make. Educational? Historically poignant? Improving society? Grand concepts, lofty ideals that are worthwhile striving for. But not the ones you strive for. You just want to make something that you find fun.

If you don’t like eyes or eyeballs, consider scrolling past this one.

Once upon a time, there was a Prince. He was the youngest son and, rather than spend his time cooped up in the royal palace, the Prince set out to travel the world with a loyal servant by his side.

During his travels, he had occasion to stay in the court of a foreign king. While doing so, the Prince happened upon the princess of a distant land. She covered her face and wept over the loss of her golden ball, which had fallen down a well.

Though he could not see her face, so charmed by her sorrow was he that the Prince swore he would reclaim her ball. So saying, he jumped into the well, riding the bucket into the deep.

The Prince found himself in a corridor filled with water. The water was filled with pulsating balls that at first looked like eyeballs, but upon closer inspection, were simply to be the eggs of tadpoles.

Still, as he walked through the sea of eggs, he felt as if they were staring at him—eyeballs, rather than eggs, rolling about beneath his boots. It was an eerie feeling that turned his innards in the most unnatural way. Hurrying onwards, he soon came upon the golden ball.

Stretching out a hand, the Prince picked up the golden ball, only to recoil in horror. Though the ball looked golden, its surface was soft and fleshy. With a sickening, meaty sound, the solid looking ball tore open holes in itself—empty pits of blackness.

The tadpole eggs began to froth, and swarmed to fill the empty holes, rolling up the Prince’s body. Sliding into the golden ball, they appeared to stare outwards in all directions—resembling an eyeball with many eyes hewn into itself.

Then the faux eyes turned towards the Prince, and he found himself transfixed by their gaze, tumbling into the egg filled waters. His hands were now that of a frog. The only thing that remained human were his eyes and his teeth.

Gathering up the golden eyeball, the Frog Prince hopped quickly to the bucket and pulled himself out of the darkness.

The Princess took the eyeball up with a smile, far too many fingers than is right wrapping about the golden globe, which she placed into her empty socket. Then she turned on her heel and whisked herself off with her witchcraft, leaving the Frog Prince alone to ponder.

Some royal gardeners chanced upon the frog, and, seeing it sitting like a human, head in its hands, human eyes gazing out, human teeth chattering as it spoke to itself, they took it to be a demon. After all, it certainly was no frog—likewise, it was no man. With tools in hand, they made to kill the frog, and he was obliged to flee.

A frog’s legs are no match for a human’s long strides, and soon enough, they trapped the frog. However, as they were about to deliver death to the hapless Prince, Faithful Heinrich, recognizing his Master even in his froggy form as all good servants are able to do, snatched up the Prince and fled with him. Together, they set off to break the curse.

“Wabi sabi. It had found it during those bad times when Rea had been only getting worse, and it had come to mean a lot [to] me. The thought that everything that we were going through, the things that time was doing to her and she was doing to me, that they weren’t bad, but that they were beautiful in their own way.

I looked at the scars on Rea, and now on myself, and I was comfortable with them. No, I like them. They were natural, the result of the choices we made, and I don’t regret a single choice that left one on me. We were breaking down, bit by bit. We were dying slowly.

But everyone is dying slowly.”

–gabriel blessing, Wabi Sabi (Part Nine)

In “A Desire for Death,” Lau analyses the sleeping beauties of fairytale stories, concluding that there’s an eroticisation of the deathlike state of women within. A necrophiliac appeal. I agree that there is an eroticism to these women. But I argue that it is not a necrophiliac desire.

All things which are ‘alive’ in any sense of the word eventually decay. But it is that very decay that draws the necrophiliac. It is not the pristine, timeless beauty of Briar Rose, unchanging as she was when she first closed her eyes. The eternal beauty of the sleeping beauties is the draw of vampires and their ilk.

As Wabi Sabi expresses, the beautiful part of the dead and dying, the draw of necrophilia, is a sense of universality. The main character—a necrophiliac himself—expresses the appeal to be the  “scars on Rea, and. . .on [him]self. . . .everyone is dying slowly.” That is to say, the imperfections and decay of men, women, and anything else (crows, for instance) are natural, “beautiful in their own way.”

Through the lens of Gender Studies, the universal sameness of gender to the necrophiliac gaze can be understood, Formalism giving us the tools to extract meaning from the text.